This is a story about three children who have to live in a big brown box with a door with three locks because the adults think they “can’t handle their freedom.” They have everything the adults think they could ever want in the box with them- pizza, toys, games, TV, even a Spice Girls t-shirt, but they don’t have their freedom so they aren’t happy. I like this rhyming story about letting kids be kids written by Nobel Prize winning Toni Morrison and her son Slade(who have written a number of books together.) And I love the illustrations that accompany it. They are so interesting with great texture and small details of collage. The adult characters Giselle paints are so funny. I think I may know some of them. Check out more of Giselle’s illustrations here. This book ends on a happy note(if you were rooting for the rule breaking kids like I was) when the kids finally break out of the box.

© Julia Rothman 2007